Hi Bob; You are rather comparing apples and oranges here. The Lehigh Valley kit is a box of wood and card with some plans and instructions and a couple of white metal window castings. You get to fabricate all the parts yourself. Don't get me wrong, Frank Titman did an excellent job in figuring out how to make the buildings he wanted using simple materials, then packaging those materials and directions so the rest of us didn't have to figure out how to do it for ourselves. Still, with the plans, some evergreen styrene and $5.00 in Grandt line castings you can build a neater and more scale version of the same building, just like your simple wood storefront model. You bring into more question why someone buys one of the simpler laser cut kits like some of BTS, Banta or Bar Mills lower price buidlings more than the Grand River models. A turn of the century brick building with ornimental window headers and cornices is another kettle of fish. You can do it; John Nehric wrote several articles in MR/RMC in the 1980's on the "snap and glue" construction of styrene buildings with brick overlays like Plastruct's. It's still going to take a lot longer than the building you describe, with more fussy work. Barry's buildings use individual brick work rather than molded sheet, which produces a less uniform look.
You talk about tieing up $400 dollars sitting under the table waiting for "someday". I bet a lot of S scalers have a locomotive or two and a half dozen car kits worth at least that much occupying the same space under the table. I do realize that it's easier to swap rolling stock off the layout than a large structure, and $400 IS a lot of money (I haven't been able to fund one myself, although I do have the grocery), easily in the same catagory as the craftsman kits by Finescale Miniatures, South River Model Works, etc. Middleton and Sons is no where near as funky as most of those buildings, I don't know if that would hurt it in the same market. BTW Barry, you might consider attending the Craftsman Structure show http://www.craftsmanstructureshow.com/about.htm as a possible venu for selling off some stock and checking out the market in other scales. Possibly Barry's error was not finding a Colorado prototype; the Sn3 crowd seem more willing to spend both time and money on detailed buildings. Possibly more to the point is that many comments point to what would be termed a "mature market", more established layouts without room for more structures or with an accumulation of older kits already on-hand than new layouts looking actively for more structures. That makes it hard for manufacturers to enter the market, and hard for new modelers to come to S since they can't buy the buildings they need new but need to search out old stock or estate sales. Pieter E. Roos Railroad Home Page at www.geocities.com/pieter_roos/pieter_1.html --- On Fri, 10/10/08, Bob Werre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Bob Werre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: {S-Scale List} Grand River Models switching to HO-scale only To: [email protected] Date: Friday, October 10, 2008, 10:50 AM Dave comments have brought up a couple of thoughts that might be worth passing around. Every S kit manufacturer, no matter what he makes, is running a very marginal business. Several of the folks (BTS & Banta) make them available in different scales so the design time is divided between the scales--smart move! The problem we have now is that some of these kits are in the $400 range. Your stupid (in today's world) if your going to tie up that kind of money to stash under the layout without a real intention of actually using it. It's not like the old Leigh Valley branch line station at $15 where everybody bought one. Face it an expensive structure kit is what some brass is selling for on e-bay! Therefore if your going to make those kinds of kits your going to have to market them like Dan & Jim do. Sell a bunch up front (maybe with a discount) and gradually sell the rest as time goes on. Nobody wants a lot of unsold inventory but eventually it will sell, as people build their layouts. Also if the grocery store has a bunch of extra goodies, do what BTS & Pine Canyon do and market them as separate items at a fair price. When it comes to scratch building, I don't do a ton of it but one Sunday afternoon I was laying out a little town on the layout. I had room for a medium sized building (not unlike the grocery store). I didn't have any kits or finished building to put in place. I pulled out my drawer stashed full of Evergreen siding sheets and Grandt Line stuff. I was after a wooden store with a residence on the second floor. I sat down with my Xacto knife, ruler, square and within three hours built up a fine little building. The next night I designed some decorate trim and an outside stairway. Third night and three colors of paint gave me a finished model. Cost ---maybe $20! plus the building is unique. Now I wouldn't want to try that technique with David's nice boxcars or Jim Kings cars but sometimes scratch building is exactly the right fit. Bob Werre BobWphoto.com David Clubine wrote: > ctxmf74 wrote: > >I actually want to scratch build as little as possible so I welcome > >all products, especially ready to run scale modern freight cars and > >locos ..... > > That just proves that it is different strokes for different folks. I > wouldn't mind if > I ever saw another ready to run S Scale freight or passenger car ever. > Kits are great. > Smoky Mountain's freight cars have been excellent, and although they > don't fit my local, readily, > I will have some just for the fun of building them. > > Having seen the Grand River warehouse through its stages of > develpment, I can tell you that it will be > missed be many people if it goes away. There are items that have been > included in the kit that aren't > readily available at this time, and can be used all over the layout, > not just with the warehouse. > > Thanks to Grand River Models for another quality building to join the > likes of Banta, BTS and Ragg's to Riches. > > David Clubine > -- > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! 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